Emanate: Insight Series ((Insight) Web of Hearts and Souls) (25 page)

Against her lips, I said, “I love you.” She mirrored my words instantly. I thought she had her hearing back, but then I understood she just felt the vibration of my voice against her flesh.

“We face this. Protect our people,”
I thought as I released her lips.

“
Then the seven.”

I was in awe. She was seeing past this day, which was more than I could handle. All I could think about was when that moon would rise. I suppose in my mind I had to get through that before I could figure out what myself and the others had dared to understand when we felt that volt of energy between us. Standing in the presence of Drake and the others, I did feel like a king, had next to no doubt that yes, I would rule fear, as they would rule their emotions. Away from them, those ideas were more distant. The reality of what I was in the middle of took over.

I stole one gentler kiss, then vanished from her side.

I appeared down below on the top floor of the building that lined the courtyard. Everyone from our bloodline, with the exception of Marc and Chrispin, was there. Each of them pinned me with their stares as they waited with bated breath to hear what I had to say.

No words of wisdom or heartfelt speech were going to come. They may have seen this as a celebration, but in my mind—and no doubt Willow’s—we had just committed to cross a final line, to become something that we didn’t understand.

I locked eyes with her mother, who was clutching Libby’s shoulders in her hands. That little girl had become the strength of this family. I couldn’t help but feel pride for that. She was mine first. She was mine and Willow’s. A gift that could never be matched.

“She’s asking for you. She wants help getting ready.”

A collective sigh left them all at once. Jason wasted no time as he collected his wife and daughter and pulled their energy upward, as all warriors were able to do in the Radiance.

Rose smiled at me before she followed.

I felt my mother’s hands on my shoulders, but I couldn’t give in to her right now. Just smile and let her think I was okay. My mind was heavy. She kissed my shoulder before she followed suit. Olivia and Felicity were not far behind. Before long, I was left standing with my brother and father. The room could not feel any smaller if it were the size of a tin cup.

“You can’t walk into this with anger, son,” my father stated evenly.

I had to smirk, envying that Willow had that privilege right now. That some higher power was watching over her. I could only hope they were doing a better job than I was.

“Who surrenders mortality with a smile on their face?”

“Someone who has lived a good life, who gave everything they had for the passions in their soul. Someone who knows they left no stone unturned.”

“Which would be why I’m not smiling. I have plenty left to do. Donalt still exists.”

“And the F
lames, with you at the lead, will end him. This is your golden weapon.”

“Awesome. So we can tell the futur
e generations that I joined my Flame to defeat evil, not because our love was so strong that we could not bear to be apart.”

My father turned red as a bee
t, as he often did when I pushed one too many buttons.

August emerged from the doorway, pulling reading glasses from his face as he closed the ancient book in his hand. “No. We tell the future generations that love defeats all, as we have told every past generation.”

My father pointed at his father, huffed, then moved to leave the room, fully intending on avoiding me until this was all over. He knew if he said one cross word to me, I would be gone.

I figured Brady would follow him since he was basically turning into him lately, but he stayed. My grandfather walked slowly to me, letting his aged eyes look over me.

“Have we been soul searching?”

“Willow has.”

“And you?”

“I still have disdain.”

“The flames are going to amplify that,” he warned.

“So you mean I’m not going to walk o
ut of this as some all-knowing God that can do no wrong?”

“No, I mean the flames are going to amplify that. You will walk through your lives, through your course, or so I’ve come to understand,” he said as he glanced at the book in his hand.

My gut cringed. Willow had been doing that for days and had not fared well so far.

“This is going to hurt her,” I breathed with obvious agony.

“We’re talking about you.”

I smirked. “Phoenix kinda walked me down that road already.” Which was true. The worst night of my life was when he gave me my memories back. Nothing could ever bring me more turmoil than what had already been thrown in my face.

“Landen, I have never forced thoughts into your mind.”

“Then don’t start now.” I balled my fist, hating that I had just bit his head off. He didn’t deserve that.

“I don’t plan to. But I’m asking you to trust yourself. This entire time, we have been following your words. From the scroll to the ring on your hand. We have fought this curse with you each step of the way. Yes, it was suggested that this day would come to pass. It was willed with hopeful thoughts, but no one would command it if your
own
body had not marked you. This is bigger than you. Trust yourself. I cannot tell you what lies beyond today, how long you will live, or in what form, but I can and will tell you that you willed it to be, and a higher power agreed with you.”

“It’s still blind fate.”

“Which makes it powerful. If something is meant to pull you from this moment, then it will.”  And with that, he pulled his glasses to his eyes and turned and left the room.

I closed my eyes and thought,
“
Are you okay?”
knowing Willow could hear me from where she was, basically just above my head.

“
Yeah. Libby is calming me down.”

“
I’m going to take a shower down here. I’m only a thought away.”

“
K.”

I only offered a glance to Brady before I grabbed the clothes my mother had laid out for this night. I stormed into the shower, trying to let the scalding water ease my tension, knowing it was reflecting in the air., that my warriors could feel it.

I had just finished shaving when Brady opened the bathroom door and leaned into the frame.

“Was it harder than you thought it would be?”

“What?”

“Telling her about this.”

“She has no anger. I would say I got off pretty easy.”

“Did she fear it?”

“Not like I thought she would.”

“That is a good sign.”

“Brady, she is trapped in that vessel. Her soul only peeks out now and then. This is dangerous, and you know it.”

“What brings it out?”

I was pulling on my shirt and hesitated as he asked that question. “Me.”

“Right,” Brady said as he turned to leave my sight. I cursed under my breath. I hated how he could argue with me with only one word and end up being right.

I started to tell myself that I could do this. No matter how this went down, I could shield her. How bad could this be?

As soon as that thought came, Phoenix appeared in front of me and all I could think was
Dammit.

Chapter
Seventeen

~ Landen ~

“What?” I asked as my heart thundered. He would not be here unless he knew I was walking down the wrong path. This would not be the first time Phoenix had appeared just in time to save my ass; hopefully, it would not be the last.

“How fast can you fortify that barrier?”

Not what I wanted to hear. All systems in Chara were about to be in limbo until Willow and I walked this path. “No idea. Why?”

I could feel rage pulsing off him
. If there was one thing he could not stand, it was being controlled, and right now he felt condemned for some reason.

“Remember how we could see three moons from the roof of the palace right after our little release in The Realm—right after Justus appeared and all that?”

I nodded once. That wasn’t a baffling moment for me. We had released enough souls from The Realm to weaken the power that Esterious was feeding off that it made sense that the atmosphere would be clear enough to notice the reflections of other dimensions.

“Those weren’t reflections, mate. They were Chara’s moon, and the moon in that little dimension you said you hung out in, along the moon of death.”

“How do you know this?”

“I’m resourceful. Donalt only needs one powerful release of energy to collide all three. You’re breaths away from having a few billion dead souls marching around your bright little paradise.”

“I thought we had a plan for that?”

“Yeah, the plan was for Drake to stop time, but not stop it from happening. When it blows, it blows.”

“How much time?”

“I don’t know how much. It’s the dead of night over there. Drake kept his word
. He stopped time when the first explosion went off and has been holding it for a while. I don’t know where he’s getting his willpower from, but I doubt he can hold it much longer. I literally just figured this out about the moons. Drake doesn’t know. Sent a call out to Draven.”

“Drake should be able to sense us,” I stated evenly, knowing that ever since the four of us touched the table—since our energy somehow acknowledged each other—I sensed the other three, at least when I wasn’t distracted by another more powerful emotion, meaning Willow’s body and soul merging with mine.

“Right. I think we both know there is a reason Drake would have turned off that connection.”

That wasn’t a hateful remark
. He meant Drake was doing what he said he was going to do to: put his girl first. I didn’t have time to even process this.

“Well, someone needs to knock on his door, don’t you think?”

“Sure, sure, and tell him what again? That all hell’s about to break loose? That he’s going to be drowned in energy-thirsty Escorts as soon as he loses his hold on time?”

“We have to control the energy.”

“That’s a new plan.”

“What was yours?”

“Well, I was hoping you and your little fire people could fortify the barrier to your world, then that would only let the unoccupied dimension be ransacked with dead. I didn’t know how to protect Esterious, though...abandon ship came to mind.”

“Are you and Draven not dealing with the dead?”

“Mate, there are two of us. Count the girls, and you have four against billions; we are a bit overloaded here.”

“If he can release the explosions slowly, my rampart soldiers can weather it. That is all I can promise right now. They can’t leave here. Hell, Chrispin and Marc are pushing the limits now by not being here.”

“What’s your timeline?”

I felt my arms burning. My shoulders. That dagger on my chest. “For all I know, seconds.”

Grief hit his stare. “Mate, you sure you can’t stall this? We kinda got a lot going on right now.”

“We do, and you are giving me every reason to stand up and defend my borders from Creator knows what.”

All at once, it felt like someone had punched me in the gut. I felt nauseated as hell and dizzy. I wasn’t the only one; Phoenix bowed forward, too. “What the hell, mate?”

My first thought was of Drake and Draven, that something had happened to them, but before I could utter a word my biggest regret and dear friend appeared in front of me: Skylynn. Tears were streaming down her face, and she was so pale I almost thought I could see through her.

“I need you.”

“No time for this, Skylynn. The man’s about to unite his soul, and his dimension is breaching
—among other things.”

“Guardian,” she pleaded as she braced my shoulders then knelt before me, gasping with tears. “Please. Please. He’s dying. He’s dying, and so am I. Please
—you are
not
this cruel.”

A fainting feeling came over me. I could swear the floor had dropped fifty feet, then rose. Phoenix was no better.

“What the hell is going on?” he growled.

“We were looking for three more kings. I think I found one.”

“You gotta be kidding me?” Phoenix said, glancing at Skylynn at my feet. “Sunshine is going to love that.”

It wasn’t a far-fetched idea that Aden could be one of the seven kings
. He was not only Draven’s twin, but light that opposed Skylynn’s darkness. Not to mention that my very vague memories told me I knew him on the other side of The Fall, that I was honored to know him.

I pulled Skylynn to her feet with a thought. “Where have you been?”

She shook her head, not finding the words, and that was when I saw the dried blood on her hands.

“Where?”

“Esterious.”

Phoenix and I locked eyes. We both knew time was stopped in Est
erious right now. How could Aden have been hurt? I had every reason to trust and not trust Skylynn right now. I mean, really? My ex basically pulling me from Willow’s side in some desperate cry—asking me to save someone that I knew I was in debt to for more reasons than I could grasp in this chaos?

“Echo. It’s in the echo. It’s bad, Guardian,” Skylynn pleaded.

The pain in my gut was agonizing. I know I was sweating at this point. I couldn’t gather my thoughts, but I understood what was happening with little effort.

“Drake held time for too long. Everything is building behind it. Whatever was supposed to happen there is going to fly forward as soon as he lets it go,” Phoenix
said with another grunt. He’d managed to push the pain down; not me. The time I’d spent in the Radiance, along with the ceremony, was making me more sensitive to this pain.

And now that I thought about it, Marc and Chrispin more than likely were not back because time had been stopped in Esterious. They were frozen in time, which would not be good if I were pulled into that ceremony.

I grunted. “Send Draven to tell Drake to let it go slowly, then get every ally we have to back up this side of the Veil.”  I glanced at Skylynn. “I can’t fix it until it really happens, and we can’t stop it.”

“Why not?” she pleaded as Phoenix vanished to do as I asked.

“Intent was set. By him or someone else. It’s going to happen.”

I wasn’t exactly sure what death felt like, but it had to be close to this. My body felt like it was ripping in two. I felt the burns of the flames, along with a pain that Aden didn’t even know he was going to have yet.

“Why are you in pain? What do you need?” Skylynn asked with wide eyes as her hands moved across my shoulders. I winced, feeling the burn.

“Tomorrow.”

“What?”

“I need it to be tomorrow.”

She was utterly confused, and I didn’t have the mental power to just explain that I wanted this day over with. This pain over with.

“You’re not dying,” she all but yelled.

Her desperation was a mix of emotions. Part of her didn’t want to think of me being out of her life again—which made no sense—and the other part of her knew I was the only one who could save the boy she had fought tooth and nail to love.

“I don’t know what the hell is going on.” Right as I said that, I felt my body rock forward. Drake had released time. In his world, everything would feel normal, as if it were flowing at a natural speed, but because I was somehow linked to him and firmly in a different world, different time scale, I felt an unexpected rush. It was not helping me balance at all.

“Time is moving,” Skylynn gasped as she began to tremble.

I sent a mental command to my warriors to guard the rampart, telling them to expect a push of energy and to push back. I felt their dismay. They were confused. They knew just as well as I did that we had other things planned for right now.

My father and Brady stepped back into the room I was in just in time to see Skylynn reach her hands for my face, trying to get me to calm down.

I felt an insane burn roaring through me. I wanted water. I needed water. I wanted to dive deep and hard into the coldest water I could find. Right as my soul started to pull me there, Skylynn stopped me, using more strength than she should have had. She was pulling out all the stops.

Brady and my father tried to pull her off me right as Willow descended, carefully carried in her father’s arms. Surely, she was feeling the same pain, the same burn.

“Hell no! No
, no, no, no!” Skylynn roared as a veil of light surrounded me and I vanished from the eyes of the woman I would die for. I vanished because Skylynn had stolen me. She was powerful enough to do that in my weakened state.

A second later, I found myself surrounded by damp walls. A dark passage.

“What the hell did you do?” I tried to yell, but it was only a rasp.

“You would drown, you idiot. If you went in that water, you would have drowned. He dies, you die. You are connected. I don’t know why or how, but I know I’m right.”

I didn’t care if she was right or wrong, all I could see was Willow’s eyes in my mind, the way she looked at me as I vanished with Skylynn.

I tried to move myself back, but I was hitting a wall. A wall of Skylynn’s energy.

“Don’t glare at me. I’m saving your freaking life, and his, too. I will explain it all to her. I will grovel at her feet, beg for forgiveness, but I’m saving your life, Aden’s, maybe even hers.”

The burns on my arms were so painful that I couldn’t breathe. Skylynn spoke something over me.

“Not helping.”

“Wasn’t for you.”

“Right. Aden,” I said with a smirk. Skylynn had always had a one-track mind.

“No. Willow. I told her. I let her see. I pushed it to her.”

“You feel her?” I asked with a pant. “Is she in pain?” I knew that shadowed souls could push into the thoughts of others, sense them for a moment or two. I knew that all too well because that was how Skylynn had roped me into her life in the first place. But then again, I wasn’t complaining at the time.

“Not as much as you.”

A cool breeze washed over me. Skylynn was doing that.

“How fast is time going to move?” she asked, clearly not knowing if she could keep me alive long enough to heal Aden.

“I don’t know. Not like I have a watch.”

“How did you and Phoenix feel this? Because you were in the Radiance?”

I nodded weakly, knowing that the energy there may have had something to do with it. But I was sure a lot of it had to do with the fact that Drake had kept time stopped for so long. I’m sure he was probably feeling this, just as Draven was, but they would only feel this stomach pain. I could deal with that. Hell, I doubt I would even wince if that was all. My issue: the flames. This mark was pulling me. Ending my life. If there was one thing I was good at, it was bad timing.

I cursed Donalt in my head, finding a way to blame him for this, too. We wouldn’t have had to stop time if he had not plotted against us. Not to mention that someone was about to take down Aden. He did this. Rage. I felt that. I was going to rip that ghost to shreds the second I got my power back. I was so
sick
of this.

I heard the rustling of feet running toward us, a painful grunt, then everything turned green for an instant.

Skylynn gasped and pulled me with all of her weight and her energy toward something, but it was useless. I was dead weight at the moment, and she had exhausted all her powers.

This was the end. In a cold, dark passageway in a palace that I’d been groomed to hate. It was almost ironic.

Then out of nowhere, the air was saturated with the heavy scent of mint laced with burning honey. I struggled to get my eyes open. Skylynn was clawing her way into the dark abyss, trying to reach what was surely Aden groaning in agony.  Above me was a massive man, no older than me. His shoulders were broad, and his eyes were like ice, cutting through the darkness.

He held no expression in his stoic image as he reached his hand down for me. I don’t know why I trusted him, but I did. In the back of my mind, I was reaching to grasp Drake or even Draven’s hand. On contact, I felt a volt of energy soar through me. It didn’t take the pain away, but it gave me a second wind. When I hit my feet, he said, “Guardian,” very calmly.